Grain Reduction - a new approach

[John King]

I have asked about reducing grain when scanning negatives in my Nikon Coolscan 1V ED. A tip I picked up from the Photrio Forum seems to work. The method they suggested is to do the normal initial scan to look at the images.

Then on the tool palette turn off the unsharp mask.
Enable Digital ICE.
Enable Post Process and move the ROC slider to the extreme left and the GEM slider to the extreme right then do the scan.

It takes a little longer to complete, but the scans are otherwise normal. You can process them as normal, I always use NEF so I have to go through that stage, then using photoshop do whatever I have to finally I used a bit of unsharp mask 100over1. The grain does not re-appear and for normal prints up to A3 are relatively grain free.
Enlarged on the screen to 200% shows a background plain colour such as sky is almost a mush, but on a print it is barely visible nor does it appear to affect detail.

 

[Martin Henson]

I think when scanning its maybe a better approach to scan without any scanning software intervention, I have experienced the large increase in grain using the software, much more prevalent when scanning BW negatives and it looks awful, the way I do it is scanning Raw with no tweaking in Nikon scan, the grain looks normal this way. I would not want to get rid of grain from BW negatives as it is part of its make up and gives that lovely textural quality, after all the grain IS the picture.

 

[John King]

I agree with you when scanning B&W and grain is all part of the picture. The long gone Kodak High Speed Infra Red was like that anyway, but I used this with colour negative stock. Excessive grain in colour is just not pleasant to look at.

 

[Digital Finger]

I agree with you when scanning B&W and grain is all part of the picture. The long gone Kodak High Speed Infra Red was like that anyway, but I used this with colour negative stock. Excessive grain in colour is just not pleasant to look at.

With colour film I always used ICE on the NIKON scanner. I did lots of tests before deciding it was invariably better with, for colour especially transparency

 

[Nokin]

I think when scanning its maybe a better approach to scan without any scanning software intervention, I have experienced the large increase in grain using the software, much more prevalent when scanning BW negatives and it looks awful, the way I do it is scanning Raw with no tweaking in Nikon scan, the grain looks normal this way. I would not want to get rid of grain from BW negatives as it is part of its make up and gives that lovely textural quality, after all the grain IS the picture.

I agree with Martin all the way. Film is film and lets keep it that way.
Nokin

 

[John King]

I quite agree, but I have literally thousands of negatives and I will never print all of them so those I have not printed (and some I have) I will be turning them into images for projection so getting rid of grain makes for a smoother image.